Given Mike Huckabee’s support for historical revisionist David Barton, it is important that Americans understand exactly what it is they’re getting when they consider a vote for Huckabee or any other conservative attaching his or her name to Barton. Barton is not simply a right-wing nutjob (though he is that too) but he is, as Right Wing Watch points out, “a Seven Mountains Dominionist who believes that every – every – element of our government and society ought to be structured in accordance with the Bible so that those who hold a ‘secular viewpoint cannot survive.'”

David Barton is proposing a Taliban-like regime in control of the United States, as you will see below. Why is this so bad? Most people know the Taliban took over Afghanistan and ran it into the ground. Perhaps not as many have thought about what a Taliban-like regime would mean for America and for Americans. Let’s take a look at Peter Bergen’s description of Kabul under the Taliban. This could be your town:

Kabul under the Taliban was simultaneously quiet, grim, and boring. Black-turbaned vigilantes roamed its streets like wraiths dispensing their ferocious brand of “Islamic” justice. Curfew started at 9 P.M. and by 8 P.M. the streets were deserted except for the young Taliban soldiers in turbans who stood at every traffic circle, carefully checking passing vehicles. Some wore kohl, a black eyeliner that gave them a look both feline and foreboding. The Taliban had banned pretty much any form of diversion and entertainment and had presided over the total collapse of the economy. A doctor earned only six dollars a month. Government ministries worked without computers, their offices unheated in the brutal Kabul winter. There were no banks and the treasury of the country consisted of a box from which the Taliban leader Mullah Omar distributed wads of cash; the Taliban had pulled Afghanistan back into the Middle Ages (The Longest War, 2011: 174-75).

Clearly this was a place in which those who hold “a secular viewpoint cannot survive.”

According to Right Wing Watch, “Seven Mountains dominionism seeks to place Christians in control over the seven forces that shape and control our culture.” Or, as David Barton puts it, “Anything the Bible talks about should not be considered secular.” Obviously, that’s pretty much everything.

As you can see from the description of Kabul above this is truly frightening stuff and it’s no longer an extreme fringe point of view with people like Glenn Beck and Mike Huckabee endorsing it. This is a man, remember, who was listed by Time magazine as one of the nation’s 25 most influential evangelicals. Right Wing Watch explains the dominionist motive:

The reason for this, as Lance Wallnau, the leading advocate for Seven Mountains theology, explained is that Jesus “doesn’t come back until He’s accomplished the dominion of nations.” And the way “dominion of nations” is accomplished is by having Christians gain control of these “seven mountains” in order to install a “virtual theocracy” overseen by “true apostles” who will fight Satan and his Antichrist agenda.

In case you’re wondering, these are the seven mountains:

(1) Business;

(2) Government;

(3) Media;

(4) Arts and Entertainment;

(5) Education;

(6) Family; and

(7) Religion.

Kyle, at Right Wing Watch, has put together a video clip of the low points of David Barton’s plan for an American theocracy:

Remember the other day when I talked about Huckabee’s belief that all Americans should be forced at gun point to listen to Barton’s broadcasts? Conservatives protest that Huckabee clearly meant this figuratively but I think that’s a dangerous assumption to make. Here is Barton on his radio program a few days ago:

Barton: There’s five areas that you have to be able to influence and control if you are going to take a culture and that’s media, business, government, education, and pulpit.

Now, for twenty years as it turns out – I wasn’t even aware of this – way back, Bill Bright from Campus Crusade, when he was still alive, Loren Cunningham, Youth With a Mission, these guys got together back at the same time and really felt like there were seven areas that had to be taken for a culture and these are the seven that they gave: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business and government. Now we’ve grouped some of those together and throw some together, but they said those are the seven areas you have to have and if you can have those seven areas, you can shape and control whatever takes place in nations, continents, and even the world.

Green: So it’s the same idea, saying “look, every single area of the culture you need to be involved in.”

Barton: That’s right. Christians got to get involved. And there’s a Scripture they used that came out of Isiah 2:2 and it says “Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains,” so this is now called the Seven Mountain Prophecy, there’s a book out by that name.

It says the Lord’s house is going to be established on top of the mountains and these are the seven mountains. If you’re going to establish God’s kingdom, you’ve got to have these seven mountains and again that’s family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business and government.

Now that’s what we believed all along is you got to get involved in this stuff. Jesus said “you occupy ’til I come.” We don’t care when he comes, that’s up to him. What we’re supposed to do is take the culture in the meantime and you got to get involved in these seven areas.

Not only that; it will be a world in which biblical slavery comes back to life. Yes, Barton is a proponent of “biblical” slavery. Who would be slaves? Those who could not pay their debts, thieves….and of course, Pagans, the class known as “permanent slaves” – slaves simply because of who they are. We’ve heard that before and the biblical justifications for it in the Old South when it was applied to blacks. And of course, we can’t forget his ties to both white-supremacists and anti-Semites. Jewish voters: are you paying attention?

This is the dominionist plan for America’s future, an America that looks frighteningly like Afghanistan under the Taliban, a land where the Constitution is dead, and where the only people who have any rights are the dominionists themselves, where slavery exists and where every facet of your life is overseen by extreme right wing fanatics with guns. You won’t even own your own sperm or your own uterus. The only thing missing will be turbans.

So when Mike Huckabee says he wants Americans forced to listen to Barton at gunpoint…take him at his word, America.